Hong Kong,May 24: China, the world's largest mobile-phone market by users, said subscriptions rose to 296 million last month, exceeding the US Population for the first time, as China Mobile (H.K.) ltd. And China Unicom Ltd. boosted sales. The nation added 5.4 million accounts in April, bringing new accounts this year to 27 million, the ministry of Information Industry said. At this rate, the percentage of Chinese people who own cell phones may rise by half in less than two years, said CLSA Ltd. analyst Francis Cheung. ``There is still a lot of room there,'' Cheung said, who forecast the number of mobile accounts will rise to 334 million by the end of 2004. ``It's a huge country.''
Mobile services in China are provided by China Mobile, the world's biggest cellular operator by users, and China Unicom. China mobile's revenue of 19 billion dollar last year ranked third, after Britain's Vodafone group PLC and Japan's NTT Docomo Inc. Bureau Report